Diving and snorkeling on Catalina Island

I had a chance to take my new Sea & Sea DX-1G (aka Ricoh GX100) diving and snorkeling on Catalina Island (California):

http://chrisnelson.ca/gallery/2007/11/02/

These shots were all taken with available light, no flash or strobe. Some processing from DNG using ACR, mostly just some slight tint adjustments for white balance.

Wow Chris..excellent. I'd die for a willing photo op like that seal and you made the most of it. Excellent use of natural light. That Ricoh seems to have a nice quick lens on it as well. Were they all taken in RAW?

Yup, all in RAW. I wish the camera had a decent buffer on it, write times for RAW + JPG are about 4 seconds. I think it will burst 2/second in JPG, but I'm hooked on RAW.

Yeah I'm right there too with the RAW thing. 4 seconds is actually pretty snappy for a P&S. My old SP-350 was about 7 seconds tops. I upgraded to a DSLR about 2 months ago. Haven't done a dive yet but that's all about to change at the end of the month. I was looking at your exif information on your shots. I was surprised at the quality of your camera lens...ie shot in aperture mode with shutter speeds well above 100, with -1 exposure and you ended up with excellent lighting. Either you did a fantastic job of using natural light or the lens on that little camera is very good.